The Real Macaw(75)

“Enormous!”

“Yes, it should be quite a well-grown specimen,” the lady with the clipboard said. “And there’s also a large Ficus benjamina in room 301. And if you see any other potted plants that we’ve forgotten, just snag them while you’re there.”

I was pretty sure now that the problem wasn’t the size of the plants but their location.

“Okay,” I said. “Rooms 201, 301. Peace lily, ficus, anything else that’s green.”

“Excellent!” the clipboard lady said. She handed me a pair of purple gardening gloves. Not a bad idea if I was going to be doing manual labor, so I put them on, to the delight of the garden club ladies.

I folded up the luggage carrier and tucked it under my arm. Coming back with the plants, I could use the handicapped access ramp, but for now it was shorter to climb the marble steps, and easier to carry the folded luggage cart than drag it.

When I reached the top of the steps, I glanced down and saw them all clustered together, staring anxiously up at me as if I were going into battle. I stopped in the lobby at the building directory to see what perils awaited me in 201 and 301.

Aha. Room 201 was the county manager’s office.

Room 301 was the office of the mayor.

“Wonderful,” I muttered.

“What’s that?” chirped a cheerful voice behind me.

I glanced around and saw what looked, at first, like a giant ambulatory spider plant, creeping slowly along the marble floor of the lobby. Closer inspection revealed that the top of the plant was suspended from a purple gardening glove. Presumably one of the shorter garden club ladies was hidden beneath the impressively thick curtain of trailing fronds with baby spider plants at their ends.

“Can I help you with that?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” the voice said, and the plant rustled and quivered as if the hidden garden lady was shaking her head vigorously. “I’m doing fine. Carry on! Good luck!”

Good luck? Did she think I’d need it?

I pressed the elevator button and watched as she crept away. As I stepped into the elevator, I found myself thinking it was a pity Rob wasn’t here with his little video camera.

When I stepped out of the elevator, I saw, directly ahead of me, a set of stout mahogany double doors with “201” stenciled on them in gold leaf and an old-fashioned Gothic typeface. A brass plaque on the wall beside the doors read “Office of the County Manager.” The right door was ajar. Odd that it would be open on a Sunday. Of course, this was no normal Sunday.

I peered in.

I’d expected an antechamber with a secretary, but apparently the county manager didn’t quite rate that. Still, it was a largish office, decorated in the same neutral colors and conservative style you found throughout the town hall. And like many other public spaces in the county, the room’s walls were blighted by hideous, oversized oil paintings illustrating scenes from Caerphilly’s history and geography, painted in the thirties and forties by a Pruitt with artistic ambitions and no discernible talent.

The painting I could see from the doorway showed a group of townspeople with pudgy Pruitt faces and stiff-ruffed early seventeenth-century costumes, being fawned over by several dozen obsequious, scantily clad Indians. Clearly a figment of the artist’s imagination rather than a genuine historical scene. Neck ruffs had been passé for decades by the time the town was founded, and the Pruitts hadn’t showed up until the late 1800s. Of course, the ruffs did hide the fact that the artist hadn’t the slightest idea of how to paint the human neck. Thanks to the ruffs, the townspeople looked fairly normal—normal for Pruitts, anyway—but the Indians all looked as if someone had pounded their heads a little way into their bodies.

I’d have replaced that horror with something more to my taste on day one. Was it significant that none of our recent county managers had?

I took a step into the room and saw Terence Mann standing beside a bookcase, gazing at its contents. His back was to me.

The enemy. Okay, not the major enemy, and probably not one we’d be stuck with in the long term if the opinions expressed at last night’s meeting were anything to go by. Still, however satisfying it might be to bash him in absentia, apparently none of the garden club members could bring themselves to confront him in person.

I found I was rather looking forward to it. I took a deep, calming breath and knocked on the half-open door.

“Come in.” The look on his face when he turned around was anything but welcoming. Not quite fear, perhaps, but definitely a lot of anxiety.

And then, after he’d studied me for a few seconds, his long, bland face relaxed. Now he just looked melancholy.